


The Game of Bear

by havisham



Category: Original Work
Genre: 1930s, Bad Jokes, Blackmail, Boarding School, Class Issues, Epistolary, Extremely Dubious Consent, Face Slapping, Ghost Sex, Holy Wells, Letters, M/M, POV First Person, Pastiche, Period Typical Attitudes, Rough Oral Sex, Saints, Story within a Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:01:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27965729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havisham/pseuds/havisham
Summary: A ghost story for Christmas.
Relationships: Model Poor Male Student on Scholarship/Spoiled Rich Male Delinquent, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 12
Kudos: 33
Collections: Consent Issues Exchange 2020





	The Game of Bear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ciexmod](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ciexmod/gifts).



Few people can claim that they have left St. Albans wholly unscathed by the notorious goings-on there, the things that are now so commonly reported in the newspapers, though the school itself has long since closed. 

Despite its name, St. Albans had no religious affiliations — it took its name from the legend of the river that had miraculously dried up to hurry the doomed saint to his martyrdom. Once the saint had been beheaded, a holy well sprang up in the river’s place. The well, named for the titular saint, was rumored to bring sight to the blind and to cure skin ailments and impotence. According to legend, the well was said to be located on the school's property, though the exact location was now lost to the depredations of age and ignorance. 

Felix Highwood, well-known in the country for his amusing novels on the wealthy and unusual, wrote in his memoirs that whilst an inmate at St. Albans, he experienced some of the most appalling experiences of his life. He did not elaborate on this point, and so speculation was rife about what it all could be. 

Of course, given the information that surfaced later, the manner of such experiences can be guessed at. Parents would be well-advised to do research on where they send their tender offspring, lest their children learn early and often the cruelties of this harsh world.

I was in charge of gathering the late Highwood’s paperwork at his home shortly after the author’s death. It had been a sudden passing, and many projects he was involved in ground abruptly to a halt. My employers decided to go through his den of papers and find something fairly complete and publishable, something that the public could take comfort in whilst saying goodbye to a well-beloved friend.

Instead, I found this — and after reading it, you will no doubt see that it cannot possibly be published in this day and age, as it contains the names of personages who still have considerable sway in this country. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to share this scrap of a manuscript, incomplete and fragmentary though it is, with you, dear Jack, to see what you can make of it. Highwood is now beyond censure — and, I’m afraid, beyond help — but such dangers as he describes in these pages still exist in the world. Perhaps one day it will be possible to publish this story, as a warning to the jokesters among us. 

I await your opinions on the matter with great eagerness.

Yours in good faith, 

John E——,

L—House, Rye, Sussex, July 5th 19–

*

[ _Now follows the manuscript Mr. E— discovered among Felix Highwood’s papers. Mr. Highwood was a well-known author of social comedies and a series of fantasy children’s books, who was found dead in his home at age fifty-one. The cause of his death has not yet been determined_. ] 

You will think me very silly indeed for excising this episode from my larger narrative, but it is so strange and singular that I hesitate to include it, for fear it will throw the whole thing off. There is no resolution that I know of, I’m afraid. I do not know what became of James Ferguson, save for the vague notion that he lives abroad somewhere and has been lately married. What happened to him after his time at school is immaterial to the story, for I do not think he is the same person as he was then. At least, I hope not. As it is, I pity the poor woman who became his wife. 

I had been an inmate at St. Albans for six years before Ferguson’s coming. I say inmate only a little facetiously, for the rumor was that the beautiful manor house that housed St. Albans had once been home to a hospital, and then a madhouse. It was all connected to the holy well that was rumored to be on the grounds of the property, now lost. 

As it was now a school, we were all familiar with the hoary old ghost stories that such a history brings — of first years waking to the sight of a horrible white face looking at them from the foot of their bed, or the sound of moaning and screams from empty classrooms, the desperate scratching at the doors at all hours. The worst place in the school, it was agreed, was the subterranean chamber that ran under almost the entirety of the building, which was thought to be the morgue of the hospital. The last time the plague hit this part of the country, the bodies had been stacked up four or five deep.

This ill-omened place was where we took our calisthenics and games on days it was too cold and rainy to go outside. I, as an older boy, was charged with overseeing the younger boys’ activities, but my attention was not on their flailing and shouts. I must confess to you now that while at school, I was widely acknowledged to be _the bad sort._

That was to say, I was a delinquent in the eyes of both the headmaster and the masters, as well as many of the other boys. I cannot claim any innocence as to why I gained such an evil reputation — as a youth, my mind tended to wander and I was ill-suited for the regimented life of a regular public school. And also, I had inherited from my father — who had died of the ‘flu when I was not yet born — a tendency to bring jokes to their logical, yet most unfortunate conclusion. 

It was one such joke that brought me to this point. I had enticed a boy in my year, well-known to be afraid of heights, to climb one of the tallest trees in the woods surrounding the school. I promised him the free use of an obscene pamphlet if he were able to retrieve the ball that was stuck in one of the topmost branches of the tree. I had not seriously thought he would do it — the pamphlet was mild enough stuff, even by the standards of schoolboys — but he did. Perhaps he really did want to impress me, which is what the others had said. Anyway, he fell and broke his leg so badly that he walked with a limp long after. 

Everyone knew this was my fault, and from that day to this, my reputation was in tatters at the school. That boy was James Ferguson’s older brother, though I did not know the significance of that connection then. 

Anyway, on this day I was charged with supervising the younger boys as a punishment for speaking out of turn in class. Such was my resentment that at first, when the shouts and laughter began, I paid no attention. The gymnasium had been electrified about a decade or two prior to my time at the school, and whoever had done it had done a poor job. The lights had a tendency to suddenly switch off with no warning, which did not help the conviction of the students that the whole place was frightfully haunted. When the sounds became too much, I called for the boys’ attention. I saw that their focus was on one boy who was lying prone on the ground. I grew afraid, thinking he had gotten hurt and I would be blamed for his injury. 

It was then the lights flickered off, sending everyone into a frenzy of disquiet. I raised my voice to tell them to be still, but due to the shape of the room and the echoes thereby, it seemed that a rival voice came through and challenged my authority. Then the lights came on again, and I saw that all the other boys had gathered around the one on the ground. When I reached him, he sat up and blinked, much to my relief. 

“What’s wrong, Ferguson?” I asked. “Have you hit your head?”

“No sir,” said Ferguson. He was a small, fair-headed boy about two years younger than myself. Both he and his brother were charity cases at the school, their family not being able to afford the annual school fees. A collection had been taken up after the older Ferguson’s injury, which enabled the younger to attend. I do not know what happened to the older boy — he did not return to the school after his injury. Ferguson the younger was an intelligent boy, lively and hard working. When I helped him up, his hand seemed too light and bird-like to belong to a boy. I worried that he was more injured than he knew. 

“You ought to go to the nurse, see if there’s any trouble,” I said, nervously. It was then Mr. Meade returned from his tea-break and demanded to know what had happened. When I explained it to him, he eyed me with dislike. 

“You’ll have to go with him, Highwood. See that he’s all right,” Meade said gruffly and I wilted under his glare. No one would ever forgive me for my past transgressions, it seemed. 

Ferguson was quiet as we climbed up the stairs from the gymnasium to the ground floor of the school, where the nurse’s room was. When I asked him what had happened to him down there, he fixed me with a look that was remarkable for its coldness. 

“You weren’t paying attention,” he said. Now, I have said that Ferguson was on the smaller side, but right now there was nothing young or youthful about his face. His eyes were a frosty blue and his mouth was set in a hard, bitter line. For a moment, I was almost afraid of him and what blame, if any, he had decided to place on me.

Then, his expression lightened. He shrugged and said, “I felt lightheaded, that’s all, sir.” Then he practically skipped ahead of me to the nurse’s room. The nurse on duty was Miss Simpson, who was the cause of serious infatuation among many of the students. She was a buxom young woman of about five-and-twenty, whose bright red hair could be clearly seen under her white nurse’s cap.

She checked Ferguson’s vitals and could find nothing wrong with him, save for a scratch on his hand from where he had hit the floor. Once he was settled and bandaged, I turned to leave but was stopped by Ferguson himself, who asked me to accompany him to his room, which was on the other side of the school. Under Nurse Simpson’s watchful eye, I could not refuse him. 

I had not spent much time in Ferguson’s company before. I didn’t know what he was like, but today he proceeded to fill up my ear with the babble common among boys his age. He stopped abruptly when he saw that I was not listening to any of his talk. 

“Highwood, what do you fear most in the world?” he asked suddenly. I turned to him, surprised at the question. He looked back at me, quite serious, and I told him I didn’t know. 

He frowned at that. “I don’t believe you,” he said bluntly. “Everyone is afraid of something.” 

“Death, I suppose,” I said. “Everyone’s afraid of death.” 

Ferguson nodded thoughtfully. We had reached his room. Without saying anymore, Ferguson nipped through the door and closed it behind him. That was that, I thought. How very wrong I was! 

*

Shortly after that, Ferguson received bad news from home. The school was ablaze with news of it, the inherent drama of him being summoned from his Latin class to the headmaster’s office. Sands, a boy who had been sitting just outside the office, had heard the news and would repeat it to anyone who asked. Ferguson’s elder brother was dead. The news was confirmed at the assembly the next day. The headmaster did not say how the elder Ferguson had died, but everyone had their suspicions as they bowed their heads to pray for his soul. 

In the midst of prayers, I felt a stare digging into my neck. When I looked up, my eyes met Ferguson’s. He was looking at me with such hatred in his eyes that it almost took my breath away. Nevermind letting bygones be bygones, I knew immediately that I had acquired a lifelong enemy in James Ferguson and had to be content with such a thing. 

It was only a few short weeks after that when summer holidays arrived. I spent my holidays in the city with my mother, who did love me, though being a glamorous widow, she did not always have time for me. Indeed, she still thought of me as a little boy of eleven, not a man of almost eighteen. When I rejected her offer to go to the zoo to watch the penguins, she asked me to help her pick her second husband instead. My summer was then consumed with the choice, and in the fall, I returned to St. Albans with a rich stepfather who was rather grateful for my advocacy. 

I was determined to have no complications in my last year at school. I would argue with no one, I would anger no teacher or outrage the headmaster. I would be as serene and tranquil as St. Alban’s treacle well. This resolution lasted two and a half days, until a tall and strong-looking boy burst into my room, while I was attempting to finish my French essay. 

“Can’t you knock?” I snapped, and he laughed. When I looked up, I was surprised to see that it was James Ferguson who was standing at my door. He had sprouted at least six inches in the span of three months and looked quite grown-up. When I asked how his summer had gone, he looked at me incredulously. I remembered then that his brother had passed. I stammered out an apology but he brushed that aside. 

“You’ve not changed much, Highwood,” he said, his narrow blue eyes looking me up and down with mute derision. Annoyed, I replied that I had less far to go than he did, at which he laughed. I did not recall hearing Ferguson laugh before, but now he had done so twice in the space of fifteen minutes. It was not a nice laugh, and it occurred to me that Ferguson was not a nice person. Something had hardened in him, though maturity had given a new and interesting structure to his face. 

He was a handsome boy, I decided, but not a wholesome one. 

After that visit, Ferguson showed up in my rooms quite often, much to the annoyance of myself and my roommate, Bertie. It was not that we had suddenly struck up a friendship — I had the feeling that there was little in me that Ferguson liked, and the feeling was mutual. And yet, I will not deny now that there was a strange sort of fascination that grew between the two of us. I will be frank. I have always been attracted to men. It is one of my greatest flaws and one that gives my mother the most amount of grief, as it means she will have no grandchildren to cosset and fawn over in ways she never did me.

In my time at St. Albans, I had taken a number of lovers — usually boys who were older than me. Most of these affairs were not affairs of the heart — I was too young to concern myself with that, when my body ran so hot and insistent. However, something warned me not to pursue anything with James Ferguson, no matter how much he flirted and dared me. I remembered that look of hatred he had given me at the prayer meeting after his brother’s death. It would not be beyond imagining that he would report me to the headmaster for spreading wickedness among the boys. 

So, I watched and waited with significant dread for what Ferguson had planned. The first blow came when I was avoiding class and making my way to have a cat-nap in the library. I had by then abandoned my notions of being a good boy for my last year at school, for I hated learning Latin and saw no use for it. I was grabbed from behind and pulled into a disused classroom and kissed roughly by Ferguson. 

“What are you doing?” I asked, pushing him away. Ferguson crowded against me, pushing me hard against the teacher’s stand. 

“Why?” he asked me with a mocking smile. “Don’t tell me you don’t like it. I’ve seen you with Gaultier.” 

Charles Gaultier was an older boy who had taken me under his wing during his time at school, and done his best to keep me from too much trouble; he had left school almost two years before. I blinked at Ferguson, bewildered at how he should know anything that had gone on between Gaultier and me, as he would have been just a first year then. 

“What about him?” I replied, shoving against him. But Ferguson held me fast and kissed me again, shoving his tongue into my mouth. I almost gagged on it, but by the time he had freed me, he looked satisfied at my anger and disgust. 

“You’ll do for me what you did for him,” he said smugly. When I shook my head, he slapped me. In shock, I touched my face and looked at him incredulously. With no trace of humor left in him, Ferguson told me how things would be from now on. 

He would make demands of me whenever he wished. I would comply with these demands, if I wished to graduate from school and go on to university without any more blemishes to my record. If I protested or in any way reneged on our agreement, Ferguson would go to the headmaster and tell all. 

“I could do the same,” I replied angrily. That little bastard (no matter that he was taller than I was now) thought he could blackmail _me?_ I knew for a fact that I was richer than he was — I was the only child of an only child of a wealthy banker, blessed with many rich and lonely aunts besides. In the world outside of school, I was worth twice as much as him. 

But, Ferguson reminded me, we were _in_ school, and everyone here knew that I was a rotten scoundrel who was lazy and foolish, and moreover, had been responsible for a boy’s death. No one would believe me over Ferguson, who was so grieved, so blameless, so perfect. 

With not a little loathing, I acquiesced. I soon regretted that choice. 

Ferguson proved insatiable in his demands. Whenever the two of us were alone, he would demand that I treat him with my hands and mouth. He would laugh at my anger at this ill-treatment and taunt me that I liked it, really. 

I hated him.

But he was not wrong that somehow, the twisted relationship we now had made my pulse race like no other. I had always been deathly bored, in all my time at St. Albans. There was no challenge, nothing to look forward to, not ever. Every spring or so, the History master would lead the boys on a search for the lost well, but that was all. We never found it. 

As humiliating and savage as my — _understanding_ with Ferguson was, at least that was a respite from the humdrum pattern of existence. 

I know how this narrative paints me. I was a callous and unkind boy then, so perhaps I deserved some sort of punishment, divine or otherwise, for the things I did. I think the longer I am away from St. Albans, the better a person I become. 

The year ground on like this until Christmas time. I was to remain at school, as my mother and stepfather’s honeymoon had burgeoned into a world tour. Periodically, I would receive postcards from them, the last of which was postmarked from Los Angeles, California, USA. To my dismay, Ferguson remained behind as well. 

“Can your parents not stand the sight of you either, Ferguson?” I asked him in passing. He reached out and grabbed my hair and twisted it. At my groan of pain, he smiled. 

“I stayed because of you, my darling,” he said, letting me go. He blew a kiss in my direction and left me angry at being bested once again. 

On Christmas Eve, the remaining boys and Mr. Harris, the history master, were sitting around the fire in the great hall. All the ghost stories had been exhausted and some people were beginning to rise to go to bed. But Ferguson stopped them and proposed a game of Bear. 

The rules of Bear were very much like Sardines — one person would be the bear, and everyone else would go look for him. When the person found the bear, they would, of course, be immediately eaten. There they would remain until the next person found them, and so it would go until the last person to be eaten would win. The bear and all his victims were to remain silent, so as not to give their positions away. 

It was agreed that for this game of Bear, none of us would go outside, and we would restrict ourselves to the main body of the school. Gilcrest, one of the younger boys, asked nervously if we could further keep ourselves to only the ground floor, but Ferguson savagely rebuffed him. 

“You can go play hide-and-seek by yourself, Gilchrist,” Ferguson said. He looked at me, his eyes gleaming. “Everyone else can play a much better game.” 

After that, we drew lots to find who was the bear and then scattered throughout the school. In the winter-time, most of the school was shrouded in darkness, so as to save on costs. I wandered down many dark hallways, only to be startled by the sudden appearance of a boy at the end. 

“Are you the bear?” I called over to him — he was too far away to recognize in the dimness. 

“No!” he replied. “I suppose you aren’t either.” 

I waved him away and moved on. It seemed as though at least an hour or so had passed in silence. I had made my way methodically from the top of the school down to the main floor, and had found no one else. I wondered if everyone else had been eaten by the bear, and I was the only one left. There was nowhere else to check but the gymnasium, even though my soul rebelled against it. 

At least, I thought as I walked down into the ancient darkness, I would soon be with my fellows. However, I was greeted with a dark and seemingly empty space at the bottom of the stairs. When I called out, nothing called back. I was about to turn aside and check upstairs again when I saw, in the corner of my eye, a white shape. I whirled around and pursued it, deeper into the shadows. He was moving queerly, but I didn’t care. It was the bear and I was sick of this game. 

Impatiently, I reached for him and my hand connected with a shoulder. The bear stopped short and I almost collided with him. It was Ferguson, I was sure of it. After all, hadn’t it been his idea to play the game of Bear? Suddenly, my old impishness came back to me. 

“Suppose,” I breathed into his ear, “that I fuck you before the rest of them come down here. If they catch us, you can tell Harris I forced you and end this stupid game once and for all.” 

He stilled in my arms, breathing heavily. I chuckled, thinking that our short pursuit had winded him. Without a word, he gave a slight jerk of his head. I didn’t wait for another sign. Quickly, I pushed him against the wall and pulled down his trousers and pants. I got to my knees, a familiar enough position for both him and me, though now I felt more delight about it than I had ever had before. Ferguson’s cock was pink and healthy, uncut like mine. I could not deny that it was a most excellent cock, though it did belong to such a terrible boy. Fervently, I sucked at his cock and let my hands wander up to the seam of his arse and massage his hole. 

I could hear him breathing hard above my head. Usually, Ferguson would be loud and gloating when I would suck his cock, but I supposed he was feeling unusually devoted to the rules of the game. Besides, the sound of his voice would attract attention — surely that was something he, in his heart of hearts, did not want. 

Ferguson’s hand clutched at my hair, roughly enough to hurt. At least that was familiar. Ferguson liked to make it hurt. I pulled away and spat in my hand. Above me, Ferguson whimpered. 

“I’ve no grease,” I said gleefully. “Spit will have to do.”

Ferguson hissed at me, but apparently couldn’t find the words. But I did not need his contribution anymore. When I was finished preparing him, I pulled myself up, gripping hard at his hips. I was so hard at the prospect of finally getting one over on Ferguson, who had made the last few months of my life such hell. Nonetheless, I wasn’t such a monster as to deny him a good time as well — I reached over and tried to stroke him into hardness. He was still breathing hard, which amused me so much. 

He stilled when I got my cock into him, so still that I wondered if I had really hurt him. No matter, I thought, it was just the same as he had done to me all those times. And yet, his stillness misgave some part of my mind. 

He was waiting for something. 

I was about to taunt him further when I heard the sound of clapping behind me. I turned to see if I could make out what had made the noise, when Ferguson twisted out of my grasp and pulled me down to the cold ground. He crouched down, his face floating over mine. Suddenly, there was a terrible wetness that seemed to saturate everything. I will never forget his terrible white face, and from the smile he gave me, he knew it. 

“Look at me,” he said. 

I did. 

It was not _James_ Ferguson. 

*

I was ill afterwards. 

Nurse Simpson told me frankly that at some point in my fever, my life was despaired of. Poor Gilchrist had been the one to find me and sound the alarm. There was even talk of contacting my mother. That would have been a difficult thing to achieve, as she and her new husband were sailing to Hawaii even now. Such was the darkness of my mind that I did not mind this abandonment or the brush with death. If anyone knew the reason for my illness, I suppose they would have deemed me richly deserving of every discomfort. 

I saw James Ferguson again only one more time before I left school. He shuffled into my sickroom one day with a basket of grapes, a gift from the other boys. He said nothing to me about what had happened that night or our former understanding. I should have been content at that, but by now, you ought to know that I was not. 

“Ferguson,” I said as he was turning to leave, having made his offering on behalf of the other boys. “I’ve a question for you.” 

“What is it?” he asked with a twitch of impatience. 

“How did your brother die?” 

“He drowned.” That was all he would say on the matter. 

That spring, I heard that Mr. Harris and the boys were finally successful in finding the old well. It had dried up a long time ago, of course. But still, perhaps it was as things ought to be — martyrs died, boys drowned, and the rest of us would have to muddle through. There was no hope for healing here. Perhaps there never was. 

[ _Manuscript ends._ ]

Dear Johnny, 

You’re mad if you think such an obscene work could ever be published — even if the author is now dead. Ignoring the ghosts for a moment, I am sure Sir Charles Gaultier would object to his good name being thrown around like that. There are also a large amount of inaccuracies in the work itself — the manor house that housed St. Albans School was only built in 1769, and thus having a cellarful of plague victims is vanishingly unlikely. It was just ghoulish fabrication — like most of this story, I’d wager. 

I could find little information about James Ferguson or his brother — unnamed in the narrative, I note. Most unhelpful. It is a common enough name, and the records for a school now long since closed are scattered, to say the least. 

But what _really_ bothers me the most in all of this smuttish tale was the lack of resolution on the matter of the well. I truly thought it would play a bigger role in the story, but it hardly featured. I am most disappointed. 

Please let me know when you are next in town. We can discuss this matter, but I must tell you that there is little hope in pursuing it further. Highwood was a notorious liar, everyone knew that. You’re hardly the first one to be taken in. 

All the best, 

Jack R —,

260 F— Circle, London, August 26th, 19— 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta, El! All remaining mistakes, etc. 
> 
> St. Alban is completely unrelated to this story, although the bit about the river drying up to hurry him to his beheading does follow the legend. I mildly ship him with the renegade priest who he switched robes with and was martyred in his place. Romantic! 
> 
> "The Game of Bear" is the title of an unfinished story by M.R. James, which exists as a fragment of a story where the narrator is disturbed by a group of children playing the game of Bear. He starts to tell his friend why, and the story ends. You may read it [here.](http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/ArchiveDrafts.html)
> 
> [Holy wells](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_well), not heavily featured in this story, do creep me out in some disquieting way. 
> 
> The school is vaguely based on [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wardour_Castle). The rotunda! God. 
> 
> I imagine that an older castle was built right on top of this one, rather than close by.


End file.
